Alli Patton is the Leader’s Arts & Entertainment reporter. She can be reached at apatton@ptleader.com or 360-385-2900, ext. 110.

Photo by Brian Kelly

The B-Sides

My last column dealt with guilty pleasures and no one wrote to me to tell me their dirty little song secrets. That’s fine. I understand.

But my colleagues in The Leader office really delivered with their suggestions. They’ll probably hate me for letting our readers know their guilty pleasures, but I’m spilling all the beans and letting every single cat out of the bag.

Our fearless editor Brian Kelly secretly listens to everything from Lipps Inc.’s “Funky Town” to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It.” Crank up “She Blinded Me With Science” by Thomas Dolby and you’ll always find his foot tapping.

My fellow reporter Nick Twietmeyer whispered to me via email about how much he loves Hootie & the Blowfish’s “Hold My Hand.”

The Leader’s fantastic Office Manager, Amber Van Duren, is never ashamed about the things she likes, but if she did have guilty pleasures they would be “The Man” by The Killers, “Could Have Been Me” by The Struts, and Metallica’s “Devil’s Dance.”

And Rainier Powers, The Leader’s production guru, can get down to Britney Spears’s “Toxic” any day of the week.

I’m beyond grateful for my co-workers for they have tolerated me on this endeavor to spread some musical love.

Don’t forget to write to me your love song suggestions for the Jefferson County community playlist.

I firmly believe nobody does a love song quite like Otis Redding, equipped with his swoon-inducing voice. Dizzying and dreamy are his soulful pipes paired with delicate guitar strums in songs like “These Arms of Mine” and “For Your Precious Love.”

He adds a fire and a gruffness to his versions of “(Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher” and “Try a Little Tenderness,” you can’t help but conjure up a similar passion inside.

And no one knows the heart like Aretha Franklin. Between “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” “Soul Serenade,” and “I Say a Little Prayer,” there is so much power in the words she sings, it’s difficult not to fall in love.

Specializing in silver screen serenades, Whitney Houston and Celine Dion are two more musicians who can do no wrong with a love song.

Aside from “The Bodyguard” and “Titanic,” their music has graced many a romantic movie soundtrack and for good reason, too.

So why all this talk about love?

Because I am in it. Head over heels, stomach full of butterflies, whatever you want to call this feeling – I am stupid in love. The kind of love that’s dizzying and feverish and easily mistaken for the flu.

The kind of love where all that plays in my head is a trade-off between Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away,” “Endless Love” by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross, and The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame.” It feels like Richard Marx is conductor of my heart’s string band.

It’s cheesy — 100 percent Velveeta cheesy. But I can’t help myself, because not all love songs can be dairy-free. When it comes to love, sometimes the cheesier the better.

After years of taking pages from the books of The Righteous Brothers and Captain & Tennille, nothing brought the cheese quite like the 1980s.

A decade that took no prisoners — a time when the bigger the hair meant the bigger the hit — the ’80s gifted us with heavily distorted glam rock, synthetic drums, the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack, Cyndi Lauper, and some of the greatest worst ballads to fall in love to.

I’m not just talking about Rick-rolling in the hay to “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Nothing beats the love-to-hate-it, so-cringy-it-hurts musical byproduct of the age of Atari and Aqua Net.

And like the hairspray, the following numbers hold up (and simultaneously suck the oxygen out the room).

Take Air Supply’s “All Out of Love,” corny crooning about a romance on the rocks set to a Barry-Manilow-meets-Bread-style arrangement. It’s terrible and cavity-inducing, but they know how to do bad and they own it.

And Michael Bolton, fashioned with a jaw that could cut glass and a voice even more cutting, is probably the cheese whiz.

“How Am I Supposed to Live Without You,” with its twinkling keys and thunderous drums, serves up desperation on a charcuterie platter. It’s contagious when he belts out “I don’t wanna know the price I’m gonna pay for dreaming.”

It makes you want to drop to your knees in the rain – I know it does.

No matter how “Hot Blooded,” the entire Foreigner discography could clog an artery.

Take “I Want to Know What Love Is” and “Waiting for a Girl Like You.” The exaggerated lyrics, synthetic sounds, and the employment of the hallelujah choir for every chorus, Foreigner knows how to ham it up.

The music of Whitesnake is no different, except they employ more fog machines and women on car hoods to the tune of “Is This Love.”

Even the best of them didn’t go untouched by the decade.

I’m talking about post-Beatles, right on the cusp of the 1980s, the cheese connoisseur himself.

You guessed it — Paul McCartney and Wings, a band built on Paul and Linda’s love and matching mullets. A band that coined the epitome of silly love songs with “Silly Love Songs,” Wings knows all the shortcuts to the heart.

In the ditty “She’s My Baby,” the instruments all stumble over each other in a fun and goofy tune about a puppy kind of love. The chorus rhymes “baby” with “gravy” and how could you not fall in love to that?

Songs are powerful things, but love songs are especially so. They soundtrack the important feelings and the milestone moments in life.

When done right, a love song can put into words exactly what you’re feeling, helping to express difficult sentiments. When done wrong, you’re stuck listening to Chris de Burgh’s “Lady In Red” or Bad English’s “When I See You Smile.”

A really great love tune can stand the tests of time — like “True” by Spandau Ballet.

This is definitely a love letter to love, but this is also Liner Notes – a column to connect the community through song.

The Jefferson County community playlist needs your input. I want to know those songs that make you feel the love no matter how cheesy they are.

Email, call, or whatever – just talk music with me.